


What are Best Friends for?

by magneticdice



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Gallavich Gift Exchange, M/M, Slight Canon Divergence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-14
Updated: 2014-11-14
Packaged: 2018-02-25 06:01:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2611061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magneticdice/pseuds/magneticdice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gift Exchange Prompt: Mandy finds some gay porn (magazine or video) in her house and concludes one of her brothers is gay, but she doesn’t know which. She tells Ian and convinces him to help her find out which.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What are Best Friends for?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Blodeuwedd](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Blodeuwedd/gifts).



> A/N: the requester (Elise) also asked for these things to be included in the gift: smut, Mickey being cute without intending to, Ian and Mandy friendship, other Milkoviches. I didn’t exactly hit them all completely but I really tried! hope you like it

**What are Best Friends for?**

Ian didn’t know why Mandy had sounded so urgent on the phone when she’d invited him over, but he wasn’t the kind of guy to ask questions. She had more than proven that she was a good friend to him, and coming over on short notice was the least he could do.

If he was being honest, becoming friends with Mandy Milkovich had been one of the best things to happen to Ian, even if the process for getting there had almost gotten him killed. He didn’t hold it against her at all; Mandy had grown up thinking that the way to get guys to pay attention to her was to use her sexuality, and when Ian had turned her down, she had understandably been offended. That had been months ago, though, and after he had come out to her and she had called her brothers off, their friendship had only grown stronger by the day, something Ian was grateful for.

He casually knocked on the front door of the Milkovich house and was surprised when Mandy tore the door open, grabbed him by his coat collar and pulled him inside. She looked paranoid all the while, quickly turning her head from side to side and checking that no one was watching them from outside.

“Mandy, what’s going on?” Ian asked nervously.

“I have a problem,” she said, worrying her bottom lip. “My dad’s gettin’ outta prison soon, so I was doing a little bit of cleaning… when I found this.” She pulled out a rolled up magazine from her back pocket and dropped it onto the dining room table in front of Ian.

Ian stared down at the table in confusion. He reached for the magazine and had to smooth it out before realizing what it was: gay porn.

“Um… you like guy-on-guy porn?” He wasn’t really one to judge, especially not when so many straight guys liked lesbian porn. It only made sense that some girls would be interested in gay porn… more dicks, less tits.

“No, you idiot. It’s not mine!” Mandy roller her eyes and gave him a little punch to his side out of annoyance. “I found it in the bathroom, and I’m pretty sure you didn’t come over here last time just to jerk off in private, so that means it has to belong to one of my brothers.”

“You think one of your brothers is gay?” Ian asked with a laugh. The sheer thought of a queer Milkovich seemed ridiculous to him.

“Well, duh. What else could this mean?” she questioned, pointing at the magazine.

“Okay,” Ian answered before walking over to the living room sofa.

“‘Okay’?” Mandy asked, following him. “Ian! I don’t think you get how serious this is…”

He sat down and shrugged at her. “You have a gay brother. So what? Does it really matter?” He already knew the answer, but felt like he had to ask it anyway. Mandy obviously had nothing against _him_ being gay, so he didn’t expect her to change her point of view just because it was someone related to her. That being said, he still didn’t get why she was so upset.

She planted herself between him and the coffee table. “It does matter if my dad figures it out. He’s gonna be back in a couple of days. If _he’d_ been the one to find the porn instead of me, he’d be sent right back to prison for homicide…” Ian didn’t question his best friend’s words ‒ the look of fear on her face was proof enough to their validity.

“Okay, so we throw out the magazine and everything will be cool,” Ian reasoned.

“Whoever was stupid enough to leave this at the bottom of the pile of Guns and Ammo issues might have more stuff lying around. We have to figure out whose it is, and _you_ have to help me.”

“Me?” he asked with surprise.

“Yes you,” Mandy confirmed.

“Why?”

“Number one, because you’re my best friend, and number two, because you’re the only gay person I know,” she said, counting the reasons off on her fingers.

“Well, clearly the second one’s not true,” he said with a grin.

“Shut up and take this seriously!” Mandy complained, pushing Ian to the side and sliding down onto the couch beside him. “How can we figure out which one of them is gay?”

“How the hell should I know?”

“I dunno! Can’t you just... tell? Isn’t that what gaydar is for?”

“Mandy…” he started, giving her a serious look. “Your brothers don’t exactly give off any gay signals… If anything, it’s the opposite.”

Mandy frowned. “So maybe you can talk to them, ask some questions, see if you pick up on anything?”

“Talk to them and ask them questions? Are you fucking crazy? What d’ya think they’ll do to me if they _aren’t_ gay and find out that I am?” He looked at her expectantly but all she did was cross her arms over her chest.

“Okay, fine,” Ian said, feeling guilty. “How ‘bout I help you look in their rooms? Maybe we’ll find another stash somewhere, or something else that’ll give ‘em away.”

Mandy’s ears perked up at his counter-offer. “Deal. The boys are supposed to be out at Colin’s friend’s house, watching the football game.” She jumped up and grabbed him by the arm, pulling him to his feet. "Let's start with Iggy's room."

She led him downstairs for the first time and Ian looked around quickly, taking everything in despite Mandy's eagerness to get to Iggy's room. The basement had the same vibe as the rest of the Milkovich household: crack house coupled with the aftermath of a frat party. There were empty bottles and pizza delivery boxes lining every surface, piles of junk that looked like they hadn't been touched in months, and the whole place smelled like an ashtray. Ian realized that this was what the main floor would probably look like if Mandy didn't clean it up once in a while.

They opened the door to Iggy’s bedroom and the smell of weed hit them like a wave. Mandy walked in confidently but Ian inched in slowly, feeling completely out of place. The Milkovich brothers were scary as fuck, especially when they’d had it out for him... and here he was, going into one of their rooms to look for anything that screamed “faggot”. It didn’t sit well with him, but Mandy didn’t exactly give him a choice in the matter.

The first thing Ian noticed about Iggy’s bedroom was that there was not one single inch of his wall visible through the posters. Literally the _entire room_ was covered from ceiling to floor in pictures of naked women. “Uhh, Mands?” he asked her, still staring at the walls.

“Yeah?” she asked back.

“You _are_ aware that there are a hundred pairs of boobs staring at you, right?” he wondered.

“So?”

He looked at her face and saw that she hadn’t gotten his point. “ _So_ , no one who’s gay would surround themselves with so many tits,” he explained.

“It could just be a front, so that no one thinks he’s gay,” she reasoned. “Come on, help me look around.” She directed him to look in Iggy’s closet while she went for his dresser on the opposite side of the room.

After a few minutes of snooping and coming up empty, Mandy called Ian over. “Hey! I think I found something!” She pulled the drawer open further and showed him her discovery. “It’s one of those glass dildos, right?”

Ian had to hold in his laughter. Although the long shaft indeed looked like a very expensive, intricately designed butt plug, it was, in fact, just a pipe. Ian shook his head and lifted up the glass pipe, pointing out the small bowl at the bigger end. “You’ve never smoked pot from a pipe before?” he teased.

“Oh, oops,” Mandy said, stifling her own laugh. “Okay, so maybe I was wrong about it being Iggy. Let’s go check Colin’s room,” she suggested.

The left the room and walked to the one across the hall, but when Ian tried to open the door, he was met with resistance from the other side. “Shit, is someone here?” he asked Mandy, nervously moving away from the door.

“No. I told you, they’re all out. It’s probably just clothes or something. Colin can be a little messy.” She moved past him and used her shoulder to shove the door open.

To say that Colin was “a little messy” was the understatement of the century. The floors of his bedroom were covered in piles of dirty laundry, to the point where Ian didn’t know where to place his feet. In contrast to Iggy’s room, the first smell that hit Ian was that of sweat.

“Jesus Christ! When was the last time he washed anything?” Ian gasped, covering his face with his arm to filter the air.

Mandy shrugged. “Probably before my dad was arrested. When he’s not here to kick their asses, they don’t do anything,” she told him.

Ian tried to ignore the smell but the air in Colin’s room was too thick with it. “You know what?” he asked her, already backing out of the bedroom, “How about you finish up down here while I go check Mickey’s room? That way we can cover more ground,” he reasoned, hoping she wouldn’t see his real reason for fleeing.

“Okay, sounds good to me,” she said, already ankles deep in Colin’s things. “Just make sure you put everything back where it belongs. Mickey actually notices when his things get moved around,” she warned. “I borrowed one of the stolen iPods on his table once and he went ape-shit on me…”

Ian nodded and was out of the room and up the stairs faster than Frank could blow his disability check at the Alibi. He paused briefly at the sign on the front of Mickey’s door that read “STAY THE FUCK OUT” but decidedly ignored it as he pushed his way in.

It wasn’t his first time in Mickey’s room. He’d had to walk through it a few times in the past to get to the bathroom. That didn’t change the fact that he felt like a crook walking right into a police station. He glanced around and spotted the dresser against the far wall. It seemed like as good a place to start as any, but he froze when he pulled the top drawer open to reveal an arsenal of weapons. Okay, maybe it _wasn’t_ a good place to start. He quickly shoved the drawer shut again and moved on to the following one.

Even though the shirts and jeans in the second drawer weren’t folded, they smelled like they’d recently been washed and that was saying a lot, especially when he thought about what he’d just witnessed in Colin’s room and shuddered. He was about to close the drawer and open the third when he noticed something shiny at the bottom. He shifted some of Mickey’s clothes to the side and saw that there was an old photograph hidden underneath the mess.

Ian reached for the picture in the drawer and brought it closer so he could make out the faces. It had to be from at least ten years ago, if not longer. The Milkovich siblings were all there, sitting on their front stoop, each one on a different step. Colin and Iggy looked like they would rather be anywhere else, but Mandy was happily smiling at the camera, proudly holding a Barbie doll in her hands. It was only when he looked at Mickey that he noticed the carefree, happy smile on his face. In all the years he’d known the Milkoviches, he had never seen a look like that on the brunet. Mickey’s room was littered with mementos and drawings, but this seemed different for some reason. It was more special... a secret memory, stored out of sight from the many people who had to trample through Mickey’s room on a daily basis, almost like he didn’t want anyone to know that he had once been a happy kid.

“What the _fuck_ are you doing, going through my shit?” a voice growled from behind him. Ian immediately the picture fall back into the drawer and spun around with dread. Mickey was standing in the doorway, crushing the rolled up porno mag in his tight grip. He flexed his fingers and Ian’s eyes locked on the tattoos inked on his knuckles. He gulped.

“Uhh, nothing… Nothing! I was just, going to the bathroom…” he lied.

“What kind of idiot do you think I am, Gallagher?” Mickey accused, rushing towards him. Ian was boxed in between the dresser and a furious Mickey and his options were severely limited. He could try to run towards the door, but he didn’t think he was fast enough to get past Mickey, or he could find something close by, a weapon of sorts, to fight back. His shoulder devil suggested he open the top drawer again and make use of one of the many firearms just inches from his hand, but the angel on the opposite side advised him to not be an idiot. Was Mickey Milkovich worth going to jail over?

“No, really, Mickey. I wasn’t going through you things,” he said, stalling. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted the pair of nunchucks hanging off the edge of the dresser. He had no fucking clue how to use them, but assault was better than homicide, right?

“You’re a fucking _liar,_ ” Mickey spat. Just as he took one final step towards Ian, the redhead grabbed for the nunchucks and swung one end wildly around towards the older boy. Mickey easily sidestepped the swing and lunged towards Ian in an attempt to tackle him. It worked.

Mickey was a lot heavier than he looked, and the weight of his body knocking into Ian as he charged at him was more than enough to take the skinnier boy down. Mickey mounted him and grabbed at his hand, banging it towards the ground repeatedly to break his grip on the nunchucks. The persistent impact with the ground stunned Ian enough to force him to let go and Mickey victoriously grabbed the weapon, poising it above his head.

Ian could already see the arched path Mickey’s swing would take, right down to his face. He cringed, bracing himself for the menacing blow... but it never came. He opened his eyes and peeked up at the thug he was helplessly pinned underneath. He watched Mickey’s face with wide eyes as his resolve faltered and his arm dipped down slightly.

With the impending threat removed, Ian suddenly became all-too-aware of his proximity to Mickey. The brunet was panting from the effort of their scuffle and Ian sucked in a breath as he realized with surprise that Mickey’s erection was pressing against his thigh. Before he could even comprehend what was happening, Mickey was shifting back off of him while tearing his clothes off, and Ian was more than willing to help him out by removing his own.

Fifteen minutes later, Ian was pulling his pants back on when Mickey bent down in front of him and picked up the long-forgotten magazine. He knelt by the bed and hastily pushed it underneath his mattress. “Say a word to Mandy and I’ll cut your fuckin’ tongue out,” he threatened.

Ian didn’t reply, but smiled at Mickey’s forced toughness. He could try to hide it all he wanted, but Mickey had let Ian in on his biggest secret, and it would be impossible to pretend that it didn’t change the way he viewed the thug.

He finished getting dressed and slipped out of Mickey’s room just as Mandy was coming up the stairs.

“Oh my God, did Mickey catch you?” she asked with concern.

“Nah, I convinced him I was just on my way to the bathroom,” Ian told her easily.

“Oh. So did you find anything in his room? Colin’s was a bust. All I found was some Rufinol and some dried up weed.”

“Mickey’s room was clean too. You know, Mands, I think maybe whoever bought the porn did it by accident.”

“Accident? What do you mean?”

“It happens all the time at the Kash and Grab. We have to keep the adult magazines behind the regular ones, so maybe someone just picked up two at the same time and didn’t even realize it…” He silently prayed for her to accept his horrible explanation without pressing him further. “I don’t think _any_ of your brothers are gay. It’s just too weird,” he added.

“Yeah… I guess you’re right,” she said, sounding resigned.

“Anyway, I gotta get back home. Sorry I couldn’t be more help.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and headed to the front door. “Oh, and don’t worry about destroying the evidence before your dad gets back,” he called to her before patting at his jacket pocket at the imaginary porn there. “I got you covered.” After all, what are best friends for?


End file.
